Can your work survive a tough cycle?

For years I’ve worn the same pale blue Gore-Tex raincoat, a wardrobe essential in the BC rainforest. Recently it started to look worse for wear, kind of grubby. I didn’t like the replacement options so, with nothing to lose, I threw it into the washing machine one last time. I selected a heavy duty, warm temperature wash (instead of the usual regular and cool). Result: a coat that looks bright and new again.

Word count: 264                    Reading time: 1 minute

That’s very much like writing. When I have a piece (one particular novel comes to mind) that feels shop-worn and tired, I need to put it through a course of no-holds-barred rewriting. I need to stop treating it as a fragile work that will fall apart if I’m too rough with it. Ernest Hemingway rewrote the end of Farewell to Arms 39 times before he got the words right. Based on that standard, my weary novel needs a few more revisions.

Kurt Loder urges writers to give their work stronger treatment: “The most important thing you can to is learn to edit yourself. Then go back and rewrite.” I blog on this often because I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that writing, like any meaningful endeavour, is full of repetition and hard work until it’s finally right. We have to turn up the heat and pummel it hard if we’re going to produce something that is shiny and appealing. 

What is your old blue raincoat? Is there a neglected manuscript sitting on your shelf? Would throwing it into a heavy duty cycle bring it back to life?

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 Photo by: Elana Elisseeva

Three Days to Save Planet Earth!

Word Count: 320 words  Reading time: 2-3 mins.

Last week I tossed a pile of junk mail onto the kitchen table and these words jumped out at me: Three Days to Save Planet Earth. I blinked and looked again. The flyer actually read: Three Days to Save. I don’t remember what was being advertised because I was too busy catching my breath from the false alarm that the entire planet was three days away from annihilation. I know it’s polluted and overcrowded but I mean, really?

At times my imagination seems to be the most active part of my body. Jules de Gaultier said, “Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.” By those standards I guess I’m well armed.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry thought a rock pile ceased to be a rock pile the moment a single person saw in it the image of a cathedral. As a child I passed many hours building castles on the gray sands of Kye Bay. They housed magical creatures that carried me far away from my dull, earth-bound existence. Those creatures deserted me for a while when I grew up. I’m glad they found me again.

But when I misread that flyer, I immediately started wondering what I should do with my last 72 hours. Very quickly, reality slapped me down with a thud, as it often does. I don’t mind though; in fact I’m grateful that my imagination still launches itself in random directions like this. Without it, that pile of mail would have been nothing more than a stack of paper on its way to the recycling bin. Instead it was a rich opportunity to contemplate an alternative reality.

That flight of fancy wasn’t all that unusual for me and it made me wonder: is this a form of mild dyslexia? Do other writers see things that aren’t there? If you’re one that does, has your distorted reading, hearing, or seeing ever led you to a great story or plot twist?

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Photo by: Len Green

Finding the Santa Within

Word count: 274                        Reading time: 1 min.

By the time I was seven years old, my mother’s interest in being a homemaker and nurturer of children was fairly exhausted. When Christmas rolled around there was only one way I would see Santa Claus and that was if I took myself. So I boarded the bus to town, rode the escalator to the fourth floor of Eaton’s and whispered my secret wishes into the ear of a complete stranger.

I left Santa’s kingdom with free candy and an enormous sense of self-reliance. That early sense of assurance has helped me in and out of many situations since, but none less than my efforts as a writer.

Successful writing demands independent thought and a significant level of self confidence. In the words of Sylvia Plath: “Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

I jumped into creative writing with absolutely no training and a vague hope of entertaining family and friends. When I submitted my first short story to a competition in Australia and it received a Commended award, it inspired me to write more.

Since then I’ve tried to associate with positive-minded people. After all, as Vince Lombardi said, “Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.” I’m on that bus to see Santa Claus and no one is going to persuade me I shouldn’t be there. I’m independent enough to believe I belong and I’m grateful to have met encouraging people along the way.

What made you get on the bus? Does your self-reliance and confidence increase the more you write?

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Photo of Santa Ross by Greg Johnson  

Take a deep breath

                                    

Word count: 285                             Reading time: 1-2 mins.

No man is an island entire of itself wrote John Donne. The advice-to-writers’ take on that quote is: if you want to succeed you must join a writers’ group. This advice pops up frequently and, for all the benefits group membership promises, there is a potentially disastrous downside: the destruction of your work.

I have seen a writer leave a meeting early, only to have another member of the group turn to the rest and say with a sneer, “Who’s going to want to read something like that?”

I sat speechless and wondered, “Is that how my prose will be discussed when I am out of earshot?”

Likewise I have had fiction shredded by members of an online group who felt that anyone else’s success detracted from theirs. I left that group quickly and didn’t bother to report back when the two much-criticized stories won awards.

Julia Cameron in her book The Writer’s Life says, “I have seen more good writing destroyed by bad criticism than I have ever seen bad writing helped by good criticism.”

Anyone who’s ever had the best from a writing group – support, companionship, and encouragement – may not understand the damage a bad group wreaks. Anyone who joins a group needs to proceed cautiously and remember the words of E.B. White A writer’s courage can easily fail him…I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.

I agree writing does take courage but sharing it takes even more. How do you avoid feeling stranded at the edge of the world with your work? Do you share with a group or only let a few select readers have a look?

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Illustration by Harmsen Van der Beek

Digging in

Word count: 267                           Reading time: 1-2 mins. 

A ridge of high pressure slipped over Vancouver earlier this week and I groped my way into the sun-drenched garden, as blind as a mole. I raked the leaves from around the Japanese maple and found a buried treasure of vibrant crocuses and snowdrops pushing through last autumn's litter. Earth teach me renewal as the seed that rises in the spring says the Ute prayer.

I’ve uttered similar words more than once when lifeless prose filled the screen in front of me, when I felt stuck in an endless writing winter. It’s still cold outside but I’ve got a handful of story seeds to throw into my writing garden. Unfortunately I have little idea which will grow to dandelions and which to brilliant flowers. I’m in the conflict part of my creativity cycle  so I remind myself of the words of Madeleine L’Engle: “Inspiration usually comes during work, not before it.” I will sow them all and work to see which one grows to that magic beanstalk.

If I invest some sweat equity into a few ideas that don’t pan into anything interesting, it won’t be the first time. I have an entire folder of deleted scenes, unfinished short stories, and even a couple of stillborn novels. Every one of them has helped me hone my skills in its creation but sometimes a person has to ruthlessly cull the random growth, even when it’s the product of much loving labour.

What is growing in your creative compost now? How do you choose what to keep and what to dig back into the soil?

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Photo: Leonidtit